Wednesday, 22 December 2021
The European Commission has published its public consultation on the revision of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers (FIC).
What: The European Commission has published its public consultation on the revision of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers (FIC). This public consultation aims to collect the views of citizens, professional and non-professional stakeholders about proposals for the revision of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers (FIC Regulation).
Why: The European Commission adopted the “Farm to Fork Strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system” on 20 May 2020, as part of the European Green Deal.
This strategy aims to reduce the environmental and climate footprint of the EU food system and facilitate the shift to healthy and sustainable diets. The strategy targets the entire food chain and describes, amongst others, the need to stimulate sustainable food processing and reformulation, to further empower consumers through labelling information and to reduce food waste.
The proposed revision of the FIC Regulation will address this need by considering:
- Front of pack nutrition labelling and nutrient profiling criteria to restrict claims: a proposal for EU harmonised and mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling and for the setting of ‘nutrient profiling’ criteria, which are thresholds of nutrients above or below which nutrition and health claims on foods are restricted.
- Origin labelling: An extension of mandatory origin indications to certain products.
- Date marking: A revision of the EU rules on date marking (‘use by’ and ‘best before’).
The European Commission also adopted Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan on 3 February 2021. One of its areas of action concerns sustainable cancer prevention, including by reducing harmful alcohol consumption. The proposed revision of the FIC Regulation will address this concern by considering:
- Alcoholic beverage labelling: The introduction of mandatory indications of the list of ingredients and the nutrition declaration for all alcoholic beverages.
How: This is an online consultation which can be completed on the ‘Have Your Say’ portal of the Commission's website.
When: The closing date for completing the online public consultation is 7 March 2022.
